Grace Williams Says It Loud

"This is a fantastically weird subject for a book. It’s about a girl called Grace who is born with birth defects and then gets polio, which leaves her with a useless arm, which she takes to calling Nelson. She is put into an institution and visited occasionally by her family. It’s set in 1950s Britain which is the one thing I would say is not great about it. We don’t really get a sense of the 1950s. But other than that it’s a brilliantly exuberant and upbeat novel for a subject that’s really quite tragic. In this institution she meets a boy called Daniel who’s got no arms and types with his feet and tells lots of tall stories, and he and Grace become great friends. Grace can barely talk but somehow Daniel understands her and talks to her as though she can. The whole book is written to make us realise that Grace understands everything she sees, so that when she draws on one of her carers she’s doing it because she’s finding them annoying and rude. And you get the impression of someone who’s both very strong and totally powerless, and I think it’s the reason it’s so strange and disturbing – it’s a tragic story told in such an upbeat manner. It has elements of that, yes. It says in the blurbs that she’s done a writing course and I think perhaps she has had a think about which novels have done well, and this book does have the same kind of heart. There is always something lovely about a book narrated by a knowing child. It’s got real force. It really pulls you along."